Surprise!

So what some of you may or may not know is I had emergency surgery. That equals 3 surgeries in 21 days.

On April 7th I had my scheduled surgery where they took the tissue from my right wrist, with a major artery, and placed it into my mouth. This surgery took 16 hours. Talk about attention to details! My family was waiting all that time...what a horrible thing to have to do.

On April 11th around 5:30pm, I called one of my favorite nurses into my room because I thought my tongue felt funny. We had just washed my hair and I was beginning to feel normal again. Right away she had noticed that the tissue was turning blue. Something was wrong. My plastic surgeon who initially did the surgery was on her way to my room. She wasn't at the hospital, actually was no where near it, but showed up just to check out my tongue. Her residence plastic surgeons came in and took pictures of what my mouth looked like and sent them to her via I-phones, so she would know what was going on. By 8pm, they were sending me in the OR.

Imagine, all your family has gone home for the night, they are feeling great because you were positive and happy and going into your own private room shortly. Now imagine your husband being the only person to bid you farewell as the big guy pushes your bed down the halls to the OR...it was hard. If it was the last day for me, I didn't even have a chance to say goodbye. It all happened so fast. Kenneth called my parents who were in the car on their way back to the hospital to wish me well which I'm sure was not easy for them...but I got to hear my mom's voice before I was taken in for surgery #3.

What happened was, the tissue stopped getting blood. There was a kink or something and so they had to go back in and cut off some of the extra tissue, allowing for blood to flow freely to it again. There was a 2% chance of this happening and of those 50% would need a new tissue transplant. Luckily, so far, I'm not in that 50%.

What an ordeal. I was just a few hours away from leaving the ICU and getting my private room to recover. Only a few more days and I would be home. But everything happens for a reason and they fixed my tongue (floor of the mouth actually under the tongue) better than they did at the scheduled surgery.

What's funny is that day the nurse asked me if I wanted to try to eat more food and I told her I better not. I had no idea I would be in surgery hours later. Listen to your intuition....I have to now!